[SPOILER] Plot Discussion Thread *Spoiler Alert*

[FromTheSidelines]

Might just be me, but I am increasingly of the belief that the machine does not exist at all. The several references to an 'air loom' - a machine that James Tilly Matthews believed to exist for nefarious purposes of tormenting him. James Tilly Matthews is considered the first case of paranoid schizophrenia.

Is it possible that the machine in this case is simply the mind, the memories of a deeply disturbed man?

The changing paths in the game as we enter deeper into the machine makes a tad more sense to me this way. As we unravel our memories, things are not as they might initially have seemed.

All the impenetrable barriers (Whilst the fuse is blown, the motor cannot be spun, and the gates will remain an impenetrable barrier to progress.)? Memories blocked away to shield a fragile mind.

I'm pretty sure this isn't the right accessment of the story, but some of it might be. It seems quite likely that our main character is suffering from some sort of paranoid schizophrenia, perhaps even MPD.

I'm mostly confounded by trying to figure out just how much of the game should be subjected to a litteral interpretation. Our narrator is inherently unreliable, and the physical viability of the constructs in the game given the timeframe seem... off.

This, exactly. You could even go so far as to interpret Mandus as just an ordinary 19th century industrialist (which was a pretty horrific thing all by itself) whose tortured psyche twisted what he saw himself doing into something not merely inhumane but into something nightmarish and cannibalistic. You could view the whole thing as a metaphor of a mind plagued by guilt. Think Silent Hill, but a little over a hundred years ago and with pigs.

Not necessarily saying that's what I believe to be true, but anything is a possibility given how few objective facts we have, if any. Don't limit yourselves to logical explanations. The truth ain't always logical.